Lunch with Fred Moseley

Fred and I had lunch today at the Mandarin Gourmet. When we first walked in we knew something was amiss. The man who greeted us looked more like someone who had wandered in from the street than like a Maitre d. He said, "Sit wherever you want. We're short on staff today." You would have thought the place was operating according to a Seinfeld script -- it was really wacky. Many of the tables hadn't been cleaned from the previous tenants. The waiter was running around giving people the wrong food, making off handed comments about Americans poor taste and the fact that a lot of what they order isn't really Chinese food, etc. Fred and I both got a pretty good laugh watching the keystone cops routine. He gave Fred a plate then came back a few minutes later and took it back and gave it to someone else. The nicest thing about the lunch was, however, listening to Fred. I'm not about to recap what was said, since he and I didn't talk about my doing a blog, but suffice it to say that he has both had a fascinating life and is a very special person. I've decided that it is far too rare that a person is touched in their life by what they see around them, taps into their inner compassion, transcends the limitations of their enculturation (usually quite conservative), and seeks to do something positive for others. If people did that as a matter of course, the world would be (pardon the cliché) a much better place.